The Life as Poem: Giulio Aristide Sartorio and the Monumentality of Symbol in Venice
Open until September 28, 2025, Ca’ Pesaro – Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna in Venice, Italy, hosts a grand and deeply symbolic exhibition: “Il poema della vita umana”, the masterpiece by Roman artist Giulio Aristide Sartorio, is brought to life once again in a display that reconstructs its original presentation at the 1907 Venice Biennale. Curated by Elisabetta Barisoni and Matteo Piccolo, the exhibition brings together the fourteen monumental canvases that compose this decorative cycle – a true symbolic fresco of human existence, developed by Sartorio through a dense and mythically structured iconography.
LEFT: Giulio Aristide Sartorio: The Light, 1907, mixed media on canvas, 515 × 642 cm. Venice, Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art; RIGHT: Giulio Aristide Sartorio: Dawn on the Tiber, 1914, colored pastels, 564 × 760 mm
Giulio Aristide Sartorio: between myth, art, and modernity
Giulio Aristide Sartorio (Rome, 1860 – 1932) was a painter, set designer, writer, and filmmaker. A central figure in the transition from 19th-century realism to the Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements of the early 20th century, he took part in major international exhibitions and maintained strong connections with the intellectual and literary circles of his time, including a collaboration with Gabriele d’Annunzio. His artistic production was marked by a deep interest in myth, history, and the human body, expressed through large allegorical compositions with a striking scenographic impact. Sartorio also served as a professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and was appointed senator of the Kingdom of Italy, reflecting his institutional prestige within the country’s cultural life.
LEFT: Exhibition views. Photo Irene Fanizza; RIGHT: Exhibition views. Photo Irene Fanizza
Created in just nine months, between 1906 and 1907, using a rapid technique based on wax, turpentine, and poppy oil, “Il poema della vita umana” explores universal themes such as light, darkness, love, and death — embodied in allegorical figures of powerful dramatic presence.
An immersive and theatrical experience
Visitors are welcomed by a reinstallation of the cycle that echoes its historic display at the Giardini of the Venice Biennale, immersing them in a space where the pictorial narrative alternates between four large horizontal compositions and ten vertical panels. Each scene is not merely an image, but a symbolic invocation: light as origin, darkness as conflict, love as dual desire, and death as an inevitable presence — preceded by Hypnos and heralded by harpies and the horses of Thanatos.
LEFT: Galileo Chini: The Yoke, 1907, oil on canvas, 124 × 124 cm; RIGHT: Ettore Burzi: Purple and Gold, 1907, oil on canvas, 145 × 162 cm
Between Mediterranean myth and Northern spirit
The cycle, admired even by Gabriele d’Annunzio, brings together influences from Mediterranean mythology and Northern European sensibility, reflecting a time when art, literature, and philosophy walked hand in hand in search of deeper meanings in human existence.
Dialogue with European masters
Alongside Sartorio, the exhibition evokes the cultural atmosphere surrounding his creation. Works by Rodin, Max Klinger, Fantin-Latour, Galileo Chini, and other Symbolist and Realist artists of the turn of the 20th century form a rich visual constellation. Particularly noteworthy are Rodin’s celebrated “The Thinker”, donated to the gallery in 1907, and Klinger’s “The Bather”, an icon of German Symbolism.
LEFT: Auguste Rodin: The Thinker (detail), 1880–1904, patinated plaster, 183.5 × 108 × 141 cm; RIGHT: Richard Emil Miller: The Bath, 1909, oil on canvas, 73.5 × 80.5 cm
Four rooms to understand an era
The exhibition expands through four additional thematic sections: from Sartorio’s exploration of landscape as a space of the soul, to the reconstruction of the international context of the early Biennales and the tensions between regionalism and modernity. The journey culminates in a tribute to the European Symbolist tradition — from Belgium to Sweden — and to Ca’ Pesaro’s vocation as a guardian of modernity, highlighted by the arrival, in 1910, of Gustav Klimt’s “Judith II” now one of the museum’s greatest treasures.
LEFT: Exhibition views. Photo Irene Fanizza; RIGHT: Giulio Aristide Sartorio: The Darkness, 1907, mixed media on canvas, 515 × 646 cm. Venice, Ca’ Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art
The symbol as the essence of modern art
More than an exhibition, “Il poema della vita umana” is an intellectual journey into the heart of Italian Symbolism. A work of epic breath that celebrates life in all its light and shadow, it reaffirms Giulio Aristide Sartorio’s place as a key figure of an era in which art sought, above all, to give meaning to the invisible.
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